The Nature of Randomness

First off, I animated a run-cycle for Marvin last month.  Here it is:

Secondly, Chicago got lots of snow last night, and more flurries are on the way.  I have plans to make a koi fish sculpture if the snow becomes at all packable.

So I've been contemplating the logic of randomness as comedy. When I write out a conversation between two characters, what often gets the most laughs is not what I mulled over for several hours beforehand, but a stray quip that I pulled out of nowhere to fill a hole in the dialogue.  It is not Spitfire's reaction to Lisa being Super Gecko's daughter that's funny, it's the offhand mention of "a union of homicidal librarians".  It's not Roy's witty comeback to an aggressor that stands out, but Fleet's rhetorical question concerning brooms.

So does randomness always create laughs?  I don't believe so.  Take the show Adventure Time.  That show is crazy-random, but it's an adventure show, not a comedy.  I've watched a few episodes and though I was entertained, I don't remember laughing that much.  I think it has to do with the concentration of randomness.  That is, if a show is random continually, then we begin to accept the unexpected as normal for that world.

I have come upon the theory that in order for randomness to be funny, one must first establish a baseline for "regular".  One must have a straight man for the funny guy to play off of, otherwise we'll be unaware that anything's amiss.  Animalburg has it's share of absurdities--super powers, crime-fighting ninja warriors, time travel, space aliens--but all this is just the background.  This is, in fact, the opposite of random, with rules and narrative continuity holding them in a neat structure.  Randomness is found in the one-time gags, the plot-hole fillers, the filler-dialogue, and the moments when I'm stuck for a villain to fight.  It takes a split-second to write and a hand-wave to explain.  You can't plan random, that's what makes it funny.

Earworm of the Day: Background music to The TV Show.  I know I've linked to it before, but the song randomly popped into my head today and it took me a whole 10 minutes to remember where I heard it from (my first guess was a video game).